Splitting up when you own a house together — and you're not married

First: establish what you each actually own

Everything else flows from this. Check the title (a few pounds on the Land Registry website) and dig out the purchase paperwork. There are three broad situations:

• Joint owners with a Declaration of Trust: the easiest case — your shares are whatever the declaration says. The remaining questions are practical, not legal.
• Joint owners with no declaration: the starting presumption is equal shares. Arguing for anything different means evidencing a different common intention — which is where contribution records become decisive.
• Sole owner, other partner claiming an interest: the hardest case. The non-owner starts with nothing and must build a claim under TOLATA from contributions, agreements, and reliance. Our TOLATA guide covers how that works.

Your four practical options

1. Sell and split. Cleanest break: sell, pay off the mortgage, divide the equity by your shares. The friction is usually timing and agreeing a price.
2. One buys the other out. One partner keeps the home and pays the other their share. Requires a valuation you both accept, and the staying partner remortgaging in their sole name — which lenders won't always agree to.
3. Keep it and rent it out. Occasionally sensible when the market is bad or neither can buy the other out, but staying financially tied to an ex is hard in practice and needs clear written terms.
4. Delay the sale. Sometimes agreed where children live in the home — one partner stays for a defined period, then it's sold. This genuinely needs a solicitor-drafted agreement.

If you can't agree

When negotiation stalls, the escalation path runs: mediation (far cheaper, and often required before court will engage), then a TOLATA claim, where a court can declare each person's share and order a sale. TOLATA litigation is expensive and slow — realistically five figures in costs for a fought case — which is why establishing the evidence and trying mediation first is almost always the right sequencing. A court also can't reward fairness or need the way divorce courts can: it declares shares based on ownership and evidence, nothing more.

What about the mortgage in the meantime?

Both named borrowers stay fully liable for the whole mortgage until it's paid off or refinanced — moving out doesn't change that, and missed payments damage both credit files. If one partner stops paying, keep paying if you possibly can and account for it: payments made after separation typically strengthen the payer's position in any settlement.

Get the numbers straight first

Whichever route you take, the productive first step is the same: an agreed picture of what went in, from both of you. That's the foundation for a buyout figure, a mediation session, or — if it comes to it — a claim.